Dream Interpretation, Therapy, Transformation

Inherited, Acquired, and Innate Qualities

One of the big questions people have, when they are embarking on a new change process, is how to find where the problems originated and then how to let go of them so that the new energy can function fully. The first question I ask others or myself is what the biggest issue is that they are facing right now. That is where you always start. It is pretty easy and developmentally sound. It is not a big search problem. However you are feeling the most negative is where you need to change the most.

I broke up with boyfriend. My best friend betrayed me. My mother or father died. I lost my job. My children are out of control.

There are three types of origins to issues, and they always unfold in this order. The first are issues that arise from your inheritance, that began in your family or lack of family. Whatever weakness your family has, you automatically get also. Like it or not it is yours to deal with. No one has choice in this regard because you don’t chose your parents or family. The problem with doing family-related work is that now that you are older and feeling the consequences of the family weakness, you somehow feel really ripped off and can get to feeling like your parents should give you what they were incapable of giving you when you were young. If they could do it, they probably would, but the reason you have the issue is because they were weak and incapable in some aspects. Everyone goes through this. It is inescapable. Whatever age you are right now, if you would just start the work on overcoming the inherited weakness, it means that the next generation will not have to do the work or at least not in the same way. Most people in the modern world have grown up with an overabundance of criticism or neglect so the first process most people need to learn is how to encourage themselves and others by finding the positives within themselves and seeing the positives that exist as possibilities in the future. This work tends to take a long time, at least a couple of years. It is a constant process of letting go of the pain that comes from the families we grew up in. The more you work on it, the better you get at it and the better you are at having your own family. When you do family work, you usually gain a lot of competence in how to relate positively to other human beings. It is the number one priority.

Why does family work come first? Families are the bedrock of civilization. They are foundation upon which order and progress are made in the world. When families are strong, everything else works. For the civilization to get better, the families need to grow and change.

When you have dealt with your family and replaced the issues with new positive energies, then you come to the next set of qualities, innate ones. Innate qualities are those that are unique to you alone and have nothing to do with your inheritance. They explain why different people from the same family can have different degrees of intelligence or athletic ability. The best way I can describe these qualities is that each person has a special drop of pure spirit placed within them at conception that is unique. My brother and I lived in the same room for many years growing up. He had an amazing artistic ability in which he had a very steady hand and just sort of knew how to make things appear on paper. Whenever I tried to do the same as him, it was a disaster, but I had a mathematical gift that eventually led me to doing dreamwork the way I do. It was my drop. My brother and I also shared a lot of inherited gifts like being able to make friends with others and having many of the same athletic abilities, but our innate abilities were unique. While the literature on this aspect of development is slowly coming to light, such as in the book, The Element, by Ken Robinson, most people don’t realize that you first have to do the family work to get these kinds of gifts to come out fully.

After you do the family work, then the issues arising with innate qualities come from living in your culture. For the most part the negative aspects of whatever culture you are in like a caste system or institutionalized racism or inequality will not want you to develop this aspect of yourself because it has the power to do the most change in the culture itself. You often find yourself tackling with authority issues when you are developing your innate qualities because a lot of authorities have a vested interested in keeping things the same because they have such a material advantage. The goal usually with innate qualities is to detach yourself from the authority figure’s control and then find how to express the energy in a positive way. The difficulties come when you are in conflict with the authorities.

The third type of qualities are the acquired ones. These are abilities that come to you as a result of having difficulties making it in the real world. They usually begin in school and they are exacerbated by the way one child is compared to another. They reflect the weaknesses in the education system to help people develop capacities that they are weak in. The innate qualities tend to give you certain gifts that make it possible to express them in certain ways. Children with artistic gifts, for instance, tend to have a difficult time doing sequential work, but usually schools ignore the need to express the innate qualities like art, and make them try to do sequential work. It doesn’t work because the developmental sequence is first to do family work, then innate work, then acquired. The school wants you to get the sequential work so you can read, but first you need to relate to other humans in an encouraging and loving manner, then be recognized for your uniqueness, and then you can overcome what doesn’t come naturally to you. The other day I told the taxi driver to turn left when I meant right. I was sure that left was right, but it was a quality in the acquired range that I have still to develop.

You can look at the process of change like this. The inherited work allows you to make the world a happier or more friendly and caring place to be in. The innate work changes the world in undreamt of ways. The acquired qualities allow you to function fully in the real world in a responsible way. They give you capacities that are marketable.

6 Comments on “Inherited, Acquired, and Innate Qualities”

Reblogged this on A Dreamwork Blog and commented:
There are three types of origins to issues, and they always unfold in this order. The first are issues that arise from your inheritance, that began in your family or lack of family. Whatever weakness your family has, you automatically get also. Like it or not it is yours to deal with. No one has choice in this regard because you don’t chose your parents or family…. This post explores how to begin the transformation work by noticing issues inherited in your family.

About an hour ago I wrote a page or more. When I tried to send it. I had a lot of difficulty signing in. About three years ago I created an account. Not having used it, I no longer have have the contact information. It took a while to get signed back in. Could you please let me know if my comment came through? I’m trying to learn how to use blogs.

Great stuff Richard ! It seems to me that i have spent half my life wading through my ‘family’ stuff. And yes Criticism is still my biggest issue. (I have mostly let go of Blaming) So I guess i am more in the positive-replacement part of that process (?) Hmmmm….. no wonder i still haven’t found suitable employment. Neither do I know what my ‘innate’ gifts are. Sounds like you and your brother had a short cut into yours’ – IE they shone through the clouds of the family/genetic climate in the morning of your lives….. Perhaps some of us just have a mildly overcast atmosphere, while others have rolling storm clouds, and everything in between. Sooooo, after a few generations of conscious cloud-clearing, ‘clear skies’ will feature in our ‘inheritance’ and Baha’u’llah’s Truth will shine on our collective soul with such radiance that ‘every eye shall see Him’ and every heart shall feel loved and loving from the get-go….YAY!….. in the meantime we patiently cleanse our heart “from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge”…….. Good on you for sharing these valuable understandings !